


Greetings, Programs

by iamfriendarin



Category: Game Grumps, Tron (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Digital World, M/M, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2019-07-18 12:02:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16118045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamfriendarin/pseuds/iamfriendarin
Summary: Brian's been wrestling with some odd feelings for a while now, specifically for one Arin Hanson. He's been doing his damndest to quash them, but now that he's trapped in a digital world with strange copies of his friends, how will they affect his odds of returning to the real world?





	1. Chapter 1

Brian’s day started normal. He got up, showered, brushed his teeth, got dressed, all that. Coming into the office, normal. Traffic was its usual shit, then it was a quick walk from the lot to the door. Dan arrived not long after him, and they bounced ideas off each other for a while.

  
Then it got... less normal. Or rather, it was the same, irregular normal it had been for quite a few weeks now. Arin came in, fresh from a meeting with some YouTube execs, and butterflies started up their circuit in Brian’s stomach, leaving him a little shaky and queasy. Dan got up and walked away with Arin to the Grump room, leaving Brian as he is now, alone with his wild thoughts.  
He sighs and runs a hand through his hair, moving over to his computer to try and calm the insects insisting on fluttering around his insides. Clicking around emails gives no relief, so he spins for a moment. His eyes land on some strange machine; Tucker had gotten ahold of it for use in some power hour or another, a relic from some form of eighties engineering. A glance around reveals no one there to judge him, so he decides to poke around in the floppy attached to it, maybe plug it in and see what happens.  
It takes a while for Brian to locate a USB floppy drive, and a little bit longer to find a converter from the S-Video cord on the device to another USB. Opening a clean virtual image on his computer, to be sure it doesn’t affect his data, takes no time at all, and before long he’s wading in the depths of relatively ancient Basic coding.  
Brian chuckles when he reads a description of the program, apparently a driver for a ‘digitization laser’. The fantasy of that tickles his scientific funny bone, and he starts up the program just to see how spectacularly it fails.  
The machine begins to warm up with a whirr, a clanking noise sounding off intermittently. The lens brightens slowly, and as Brian turns around, still giggling about the premise of the device, it flashes brightly.  
And just like that, Brian is gone.

"Program! Move it!" A harsh shove brings Brian back to consciousness, blinking in the soft blue light. Another shove has him stumbling, and now he’s coming to an important realization.  
This isn’t the office.

A shock to his side brings him out of his brief reverie, and he looks to see some unfamiliar face looking back at him. The mystery man is wearing a grey suit of armor, perhaps, lined with glowing, bright orange stripes, and holding a lightly sparking staff. “Vacate the entry port!”  
The staff is held threateningly, and Brian throws his hands up. "Okay! Okay, I’m going!"  
The guard is joined by a partner, dressed identically, and they take turns jabbing Brian as they lead him through a long hallway, into a large room filled with cells. There’s a shimmering field in front of each door, keeping depressed-looking people trapped. A catwalk sprawls above, lined with even more guards doing their rounds.  
Brian is led to an empty cell, roughly shoved in by his guides and left alone. A touch to the doorway reveals that shimmering was some sort of energy field, and now... now he’s very confused.  
He sits on the floor, starting to go over everything.  
He’d been screwing on the computer, playing with the laser Tucker got.  
He started the program, and there was a flash. He blacked out.  
Now he’s in a strange place, wearing a grey jumpsuit much like the two guards, but with teal accents instead of orange and no armor.  
And apparently energy based forcefields aren’t as fantastical as he’d previously thought.  
Brian’s thoughts are interrupted as someone is shoved into the cell next to him. He looks up and is so happy to be met with a familiar face. "Ross!"  
‘Ross’ looks up with a glare, wearing grey armor like the guards, but no hood, and with yellow accent instead of orange. "Ross? That’s my user.”  
"What?" Brian blinks, standing. “User? What are you talking about?”  
"’Ross’ is my User. My name is Rubber."  
He gapes at the other, shaking his head. “No, I… Ross, quit fucking with me, is this some kind of practical joke?”  
“Joke? Uh… no?” He sits on a small ledge by their connecting field, watching him. “Wish it was, though. This whole thing is a nightmare.”  
“What thing?” Brian sits on the opposite side, trying to reach through the gap and getting zapped for his trouble.  
“The MCP, obviously, the reason you and I are here. Duh. What’s your name, anyway?”  
“Uh… Brian.”  
“Brian, huh? Weird name for a program. You get corrupted when you were brought over the network?”  
“Maybe a little?” He looks down. Maybe it’s best to play along.  
Ross, no, Rubber nods. “It happens. Give it a nanocycle, I’m sure it’ll come back to you.”  
Brian sighs, head meeting his hands. He stays like that for God only knows how long, before a harsh voice commands both out of their cells. Two guards bracket Brian on either side, and Rubber gives him a wave as he’s led away by another pair of guards. “Good luck, Brian.”


	2. Playtime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brian realizes exactly what kind of hell he's landed in, and just how stranded he really is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would you look at that, I'm not actually dead. Hopefully I can get back into the writing loop and start to put out a whole Content soon. Thanks for reading!

The guards lead Brian for what seems like an hour, before they arrive in an arena of some kind. It appears to simply be a small ledge in a room with no floor, only a massive chasm, until a second pair of guards and another… program… arrive, this one in blue like Brian. Both get odd hook shaped devices strapped onto their arms, and then two narrow platforms jut out, ending in larger areas shaped like bulls-eyes. Brian is shoved onto one and the stranger onto the other, and both commanded to walk out to the center of the circles. He watches in awe as the narrow walkways fade away, leaving the two floating in nothing on their opposing circles.

An arm extends above the stranger, dropping a glowing ball that he catches in his hook-thing. “Bet you think you’ll wipe me right out, doncha?”  
Brian’s eyes widen. “No, I—” He can’t finish his sentence before the other lobs the ball at the ceiling, bouncing it from a panel above and into Brian’s circle. He tries to catch it, but isn’t quite fast enough, and watches as it causes the ring it contacts to disappear entirely. His breath quickens as he realizes that this game is to the death.  
  
It seems to stretch on and on, both throwing and catching, and misses causing anxiety to ratchet up to eleven. Brian’s on his last three rings when he realizes how much easier this would be if he were younger. A **ping** from above signals the ball dropping into his opponent’s hook, and he only has a moment to react and catch the orb. He uses the time to catch his breath, before doing a cute little hop and jump to launch the orb right back. The other jumps across a gap in his platform to try and catch it but misses by an inch. His ring fades to nothing, and Brian watches in horror as he drops, barely catching himself on the outermost ring.

That **ping** sounds again, dropping the ball into Brian’s grasp. Now, he must think. They were both fighting for their lives not moments ago, but now, when his opponent was weak, could he land a finishing blow? Could... could he kill as he and Dan had joked for NSP for all these years?  
A harsh voice echoes above. **“Finish the game!”  
** He recognizes the voice for a moment but pushes that aside in favor of a strangled yell back. “No!”  
**“Finish him, program!”**  
“No..” He stares into the dark ceiling above, dropping the ball in the gap between his rings. Silence is his reply, and he thinks for a moment that maybe he’s won. Maybe they’ll both walk out of this alive.  
His opponent’s circle flashes brightly before fading entirely, and he screams into the void as he becomes nothing more than a blue light zipping to the sky.

Brian winces, ready to meet the same end, but instead his circle becomes whole again, connected to the first ledge once more. The same guards march out to meet him, but they don’t take him back to his cell. Instead, he’s led the other way, to what makes him think of a lobby for a combat game. Three orange programs stand at one wall, and on the other are Rubber and a pink program.  
“Brian, you made it!” Rubber exclaims, earning a whap with a shock stick for his enthusiasm.

It doesn’t faze Brian, though, not as much as the pink program he now stands before. “…. Arin?”  
The pink one glares down at him, eyes cold and calculating where Arin’s are normally warm and inviting. “Where did you hear that name?”  
The harsh tone shocks Brian, and he stammers a moment. “Well, that’s your name, isn’t it?”  
“The name of my user.” His cold look becomes suspicious, and he gives Brian a once-over. “Who are you?”  
“Brian.”  
“That’s an odd name for a program.” He gives a gentle smack to Rubber when he pipes up with ‘that’s what I said’, but then turns back to Brian. “Call me Echo.”  
“Echo… okay.” Brian sighs as he’s shoved into place next to Echo. A guard starts to drone about the event they’re about to be ‘given the honor’ of participating in, something called lightcycles.  
“The object of this game is to survive. Your cycles will leave a light wall behind as you maneuver the arena. Collision with these walls or the outer walls of the arena will result in your immediate deresolution. Survival will ensure your ability to further participate in the games for the entertainment of the Master Control Program.”  
Brian takes a breath, trying to ease the anxiety in his bones at the prospect of yet another game to the death, before the six players are warped away.

**Author's Note:**

> Check me out at ramuswrites.tumblr.com! Sometimes I'm actually there!


End file.
